Efficient and effective performance management is of increasing importance in today's working culture. There are various systems in existence, most of which relate only to one specific management theory and are often piecemeal in their approach. Performance may be managed on the basis of prescription, that is required actions and behaviours may be specified, and it may also be measured on the basis of results. In this case the required outcomes are defined and less specification of tasks, behaviours or competencies is provided. Neither approach on its own is satisfactory, prescribed behaviours may not produce the desired results, and equally where required outcomes are specified the means used to achieve these may not be consistent with the organisation's values and policy.
To date most systems evaluate performance by setting objectives for an employee to meet and then measuring the employee's ability to meet those objectives. This approach is too simplistic and fails to provide a proper account of an employee's total job performance, as measured by satisfaction of all job accountabilities, responsibilities and tasks as well as the individual objectives. In addition to the above most systems are paper based, or are stored as discrete electronic files and have no interconnection with each other, or with other systems. Documents typically stored include job descriptions, job analyses, person specifications, individual objectives, performance reviews, individual development plans and the like.
These prior art filing systems are inconvenient to update and do not maintain dynamic links to individual employees or to performance management resources. In modern organisations performance expectations change frequently and need to be continually updated.
There have been advances in developing software-implemented systems for performance management. Some existing systems generate job descriptions from static libraries of responsibilities and tasks, but do not allow the linking of employees by use of the main human resource system, nor do they allow the use and moderation of dynamic libraries. There are systems that perform job analyses using various methods, but fail to provide links automatically to job descriptions or person specifications.
There are existing systems for 360-degree performance surveys for standard organisational competencies. Such systems are prone to providing subjective data, and lack sophisticated design control to improve validity. None of the 360-degree performance surveys integrate with all the aspects of individual job performance or the monitoring of organisational performance data from other systems. In addition these survey systems have limited statistical analysis.
A further problem with current systems is that the entire performance review process is often institutionalised as an annual or biannual event with little ongoing performance review.
In addition there have been no systems to date which incorporate performance diagnostics.
Existing electronic systems display a limited range of information on individual performance—a spotlight effect. There are no existing electronic performance management systems that place all aspects of individual and team performance within a single field of view.
There is a need for a system, which provides a totally integrated resource for organisations to manage the performance of individuals, teams and larger organisational entities. This system needs to facilitate the clear statement of all job related performance expectations, including what should be done, how performance is to be measured, and the expected results. The system needs to record and link such expectations to monitoring and recording of actual performance in a range of ways, and provide a means for using this information to review and develop performance. Additionally this system needs to provide senior and human resource managers with information as to the integrity of the performance management process, that it is occurring, and that it is being carried out correctly. Introduction of such an integrated performance management system constitutes a major change in organisational culture. The system needs to have sophisticated access control functionality to enable introduction of effective performance monitoring and feedback in a graduated manner